Barely a week from what should be the start of baseball's spring training, major league owners and players are no closer to settling their labor dispute than they were six months ago. When the president of the United States can't jawbone a settlement in a labor dispute with high public interest, a voluntary agreement is nowhere near in sight. And Mr. Clinton's call on Congress to impose binding arbitration holds little promise.
Union leaders have long seemed to be relying on eventual federal action of one sort or another to break the deadlock with the owners. They keep trumpeting their victory in unfair labor practices complaints as if it were the final blow that would break the owners' resolve. Except it doesn't.
And now that Mr. Clinton's personal mediator, W. J. Usery, has aroused the union's wrath with a proposed settlement its leaders think favors the owners, his position is compromised. With the White House ready to give them just about all they want, why should the owners welcome arbitration?
Those are tactical issues, however. The basic truth in the protracted dispute is its lunacy. There is no longer much point in allocating blame. The owners were bent last summer on breaking the players union and deflating the bloated salaries they themselves were offering. The players dug in and refused to seek an acceptable compromise. The mutual mistrust is born of each side's determination to dominate the other -- unlike other major sports which are prospering because labor and management ended years of animosity.
It's impossible to escape the conclusion that both sides are so wrapped up in themselves they are blind to the world around them. Perhaps a presidential gun held to their heads would induce a voluntary settlement. But the gun Mr. Clinton is brandishing has no bullets, and both sides know it.
Unless the president is holding the Taft-Hartley law in reserve. That 1947 law could permit the administration to order play resumed for 80 days while mediation continued. If mediation fails, players would vote in secret ballot on the owners' final offer, thus bypassing the union leaders. Lower court opinions provide a mixed picture on whether Taft-Hartley, historically anathema to organized labor, would apply to baseball.
Opening Day is less than two months off. As the time to play ball approaches, the pressures on both owners and players to settle will become tremendous. Each side has a lot to lose if the season doesn't start on time, and baseball as an institution would suffer most of all. Like it or not, owners and players must realize compromise is the only viable way out. Common sense is in short supply on both sides, but that's all it would take.